Civil War Christmas Traditions in Little Women
Christmas calls the sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s novel to reflect on their bonds with each other and their parents, and on the kinds of lives they want to lead.
Blog
Reading Winter
In poems by Margaret Atwood, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Robert Frost, we get a sense of the claustrophobia of winter without being overpowered by it.
Belonging and Paris Stories
While the stories in Mavis Gallant’s 2002 collection don’t always center on Paris, a number of the characters have some sort of imagined relationship to the city, using it as a stand-in for their own lack of belonging.
Shadows of Love, Secrecy, and Ownership in Celestial Bodies
Jokha Alharthi’s novel is the first book by an Arab author to win the Man Booker International Prize. In it, Alharthi crafts a stunning rumination on love, responsibility, feminism, and freedom, as well as the unavoidably sour ramifications of the accompanying disappointment and betrayal.
Shifting Perspective in Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red
Carson’s novel is driven by unlatching being: her protagonist’s narration progresses from the self-absorption of childhood through adolescence and into the comparative wisdom of young adulthood. Carson shows this journey primarily through changes in the way that the outside world, and those who live in it, are observed.
Sadness, Metaphor, and Pedagogy in The Sword in the Stone
In the first book of T. H. White’s Arthurian saga, published in 1938, a young Arthur feels restless and sulky. Arthur’s stepfather shoos him away to Merlyn’s study for advice and a little cheering up, and Merlyn tells his pupil, “The best thing for being sad is to learn something.”
Truth and Lies in Elena Ferrante’s Incidental Inventions
Over the course of Ferrante’s new essay collection, her commentary on the contingencies of telling both truth and lies shines new light on the relationship between narrative and the frightening reality she has elsewhere called the “frantumaglia.”
Mindy Aloff’s Dance in America: A Reader’s Anthology
The challenge of Aloff’s project stands not only in relation to the mass of written material to potentially engage, but in how to remain in keeping with the Library’s undertaking “to celebrate the words that have shaped America” when dealing with an artform that creates a world “where there are no names for anything.”
Reading Kiese Laymon’s Heavy: An American Memoir
When I read Laymon’s recent memoir, I had a visceral reaction. It reminded me why I started writing. It made me wonder if my writing reaches my peoples and keeps us revising and growing in our stories. If writing protects us from the silence of memories lost.